Page 5 of A Diamond Deal
That’s whathewanted, wasn’t it?
He was having an affair to avoid the tragedy their marriage had become by pretending his wife and son didn’t exist.
A tear slipped free.
She didn’t know if she’d ever be ready to confrontthat. Or him.
She exhaled slowly through her nostrils.
Maybe she would never have to.
Maybethiswas the end of it.
The end ofthem.
She stretched her arm over the side of the boat. She held it there. Her fingers trembled.
‘Goodbye, Konstantinos.’
She let go of her phone. Into the water’s dark depths it disappeared.
And so, too, did Poppy.
CHAPTER ONE
Twelve Months Later…
Poppy pushed upthe sash window. The air was too stifling.Too close, her mother would have said. As if the air itself was closing in.
It was a warning the storm was near.
Soon the heavens would open.
The sky would tear with lightning bolts.
The thunder would roar.
But outside, there were no signs of an incoming storm. All was as it had been for the last year.Picturesque.Not a cloud was in the sky. The sun shone over Paris in a blanket of warm orange. The Champ de Mars was a forest of green beneath the Eiffel Tower. A postcard picture she only viewed from inside. Hidden behind the glass. Safe inside her temporary home.
She’d always known it would be temporary. Yet she wasn’t ready to leave. She wasn’t ready to face the world outside the haven this place had become to her. A place to heal.
She exhaled sharply.
She knew the closeness of the storm wasn’t making her skin clammy, though. It was the telephone meeting taking place a few rooms down.
‘I’m so sorry, my dear.’
Léon Durand. Her old employer had opened his home to her without condition, but with empathy. They’d both lost so much. They’d…talked. Of their losses. Of hers.
Léon was a blessing. He always had been. Her very first employer straight out of university. Durand Cruise Liners never should have hired her. She’d been too inexperienced, despite her double degrees and her aptitude for languages, to be a personal assistant to the head of a conglomerate. But it was an unusual position no experienced PA would have agreed to.
His son, Caleb, had taken over the family business. Léon’s position within his own company had become redundant, his staff had been reduced or transferred, and yet he stayed in his office. He refused to officially retire. Caleb had confided he did this because no one was at home any more. His wife had died. He was alone in a six-storey mansion. And so he stayed in his second home. Durand Towers. Poppy was hired to keep Léon…company.A companion.
And now they were each other’s.
‘There’s nothing I can do,’ Léon said quietly from the doorway. ‘There’s no way to stop it.’
Her mouth ran dry.
